This is a blog about my teaching, research and service with some occasional personal comments thrown in. These are my notes on a variety of topics. If you want to follow my blog posts on a specific topic, then see the Table of Contents in the right-hand column. While I try to work in the realm of facts, logic and moral absolutes, if there are any opinions expressed here, they are my own. -WilliamHartPhD

I wonder how information theory (from the fields of computer science, mathematics and communication studies) can be applied to transmedia adaptations. Information theory focuses on how information is transmitted with special attention given to the errors/data loss in the process. Is data lost in adaptations?

Sunday, November 29, 2009

In this short clip from the JamesPatterson.com site Patterson talks about his style of writing about his characters. He says his style is colloquial storytelling in which there is not an excess of information shared about the characters. Some authors give a lot of background information, but Patterson does not. This works especially when you can spread out background information over a series of novels.

Abstract/ProposalTransmedia Narratology, the Mystery Novel and Video Gamesby William Hart and Akeem Caffee

By means of narrative criticism this paper aims to answer the following questions: (1) How do mystery narratives change when being adapted from novels to video games? (2) How should mystery video games be designed?

The specific texts analyzed are the Women’s Murder Club series of novels written by James Patterson and the four recently released Women’s Murder Club video games (3 PC and 1 DS). In the past three years Patterson’s books have sold 170 million copies worldwide, more books than any other author. In addition, Patterson has had nineteen consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels. However, there is very little scholarly analysis of Patterson’s work compared to the work of Stephen King, for example. While video games have been around since the 1970s, only in the past decade has video game studies carved out a niche of its own. Within the growing video game studies literature there is some general study of adaptation, however, there is little attention given to adaptation within specific genres. Given that the mystery genre is especially defined by “rules” for how best to construct a mystery, adaptation from a mystery novel to a mystery video game is especially challenging. Thus, a study of how Patterson’s mystery novels have been adapted to mystery video games is worthy of some attention.The paper concludes with some theoretical insight for transmedia narratology and some practical advice on mystery video game design. Additionally the paper gives some insight on the narratology-ludology debate found in the video game studies literature.

According to software developer, Zynga, 26 million people play Farmville, the Facebook-based farm simulation game, on a daily basis. There are 65 million users total. My 2 youngest daughters are 2 of the 65 million users.

We need some points of comparison. The Call of Duty sales do not, for example, match the total world-wide box office earnings for the 6 Star Warsfilms or the 6 Harry Potter films but, they are getting closer. The Call of Duty franchises does, however, surpass the 3 Pirates of the Caribbean films or the 3 The Lord of the Rings films in gross sales world-wide (see top grossing film franchises).

Also, according to the press release, the latest installment in the series, Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2, earned $550 million in world-wide sales in the first five days, "the biggest entertainment launch in history." As another point of comparison, the recent release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon only reached $338 million in world-wide sales in 8 days.* New Moon is "the third highest-grossing opening behind only The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3."More interestingly, Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, Inc. said "If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history."

With numbers and statements like these, video games deserve some attention, yes?

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Transmedia narratology is defined here as the study of how story and story structure change in the process of moving from one medium to another (e.g. from novel to film, from novel to video game, from scientific publication to print news story).

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